." >> narrator: so began the building of a religion. now it is our turn, with the help of scholars and historians, theologians and archaeologists, to return to that time and use our best efforts to understand that story... of a man born in obscurity in whose name a faith was made. >> narrator: we know so little about him-- that he was born more than 2,000 years ago, and that he lived in palestine. we know he was baptized and became a preacher. and we know that he was publicly executed. >> ( dramatized ): what manner of man is this that even the winds and the seas obey him? >> narrator: with so little evidence to go by, archaeologists must sift the clues, and scholars decode the stories told by the first followers of jesus. >> the problem for any historian in trying to reconstruct the life of jesus is simply that we don't have sources that come from the actual time of jesus himself. >> the historian's task in understanding jesus and the jesus movement and early christianity is a lot like the archaeologist's task in excavating a tell. you